Across more than three decades, Jaya Tolani has outfitted Columbia.

From her Looking Good menswear shop at 6531 Two Notch Road, Tolani has helped dress out countless members of local church choirs. Boys who needed a needed a new suit for Easter. Men who wanted to look sharp for an upcoming job interview. Even a mayor of Columbia was known to pop into the store on occasion.

She’s toiled as styles and tastes have changed subtly over time, as Columbia has grown and evolved, and as online shopping has risen and changed the retail landscape for brick-and-mortar stores.

And through it all, Tolani has helped customers find the perfect look, the right color tie and pocket square, the shoes that really set off the whole outfit.

But those days will soon be coming to a close. Tolani recently told The State she is planning to retire, and has started the process of winding down Looking Good. Many items across the store have already been marked down, and there are signs posted across the inside of the shop thanking customers for their patronage for the last 30-plus years.

An exact date for a closure has not yet been set, Tolani said. The store may be around until Easter, she noted, but that’s not for certain. It really depends on how merchandise moves in the coming months.

Getting to this point, having become a fixture in the community and preparing to exit the business on her own terms, has been a hard journey for the India native. From picking up the pieces 30 years ago when her husband died to facing a serious deportation threat a few years later, her story is one of persistence and neighbors pulling together to support one of their own.

Jumping in and taking over

Tolani, 73, is one of 15 brothers and sisters. She and her late husband Gulab Tolani came to the U.S. in 1984, and Gulab first opened Looking Good in the early 1990s on Decker Boulevard. Gulab died in 1995, leaving behind Jaya and their two sons, Hitesh and Ravi.

Despite the fact that she had little experience running the store at the time of her husband’s passing, Jaya Tolani jumped in and took over Looking Good, working to provide for her two sons. She was so new to the business back in 1995, in fact, that in those early weeks after her husband’s death a friendly UPS driver bringing goods to the store had to show her how to write a check.

But, over time, she found her way at Looking Good, which has been in its current spot on Two Notch Road since 2003. A major part of the success of the store has been forging relationships with customers who have come back again and again.

“They started calling me ‘mama’ and ‘sister,’” Tolani said of many of her customers. “In the beginning, people would say, ‘Oh, how can you manage to have this men’s store? How can you do that alone in America?’ This store has given me dignity. This store has given me a respect in society. For the last 31 years, my customers have been so good to me.”

And it has been generational, Tolani notes, as many of her customers now have younger family members who come in to shop.

“Their grandchildren are coming here now,” Tolani said with a smile. “From fathers to sons, and from sons to grandchildren. I’ve been here so many years. It’s in my blood, this business.”

The death of her beloved husband in 1995, which left her a widow with two young sons to raise and a business that needed to be run, wasn’t Tolani’s only struggle. Just a year later, in 1996, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. While she was eventually able to beat that dreaded disease through treatment and surgery, it was a harrowing time.

“I decided I would live day to day,” Tolani said of the years shortly after her husband passed. “I didn’t think of tomorrow. I wanted to feed [the children], to take care of them, to get them an education. Only that was in my mind. And day to day, for more than 30 years, I have lived an American life.”

And it’s a life that created a pathway to education and professional promise for her two sons. Hitesh, who graduated from Wofford College, is a dentist and entrepreneur who lives in Boston, while Ravi graduated from the University of South Carolina and works for an investment firm in Philadelphia.

“Education was a third eye for them,” Jaya said of her two sons. “I always told them, you can lose money, you can lose property, but you cannot lose education. When you’re educated, nobody can steal that from you. It’s your third eye.”

Threat of deportation

Gulab Tolani’s death and Jaya’s cancer diagnosis weren’t the only adversities the Tolani family came up against.

A few years after Gulab’s passing, Jaya and Hitesh faced a serious threat of deportation in 2002, despite having lived in the U.S. for years. (Ravi was born in the U.S.) Only after a massive letter-writing campaign from friends, neighbors and concerned residents and intervention from then-U.S. Sens. Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings was the family allowed to remain the country. They were granted permanent residency in 2004 and have since become U.S. citizens.

Hitesh Tolani was recently back in Columbia visiting Jaya, helping her mark down items at Looking Good and assisting her in the process of starting to wind down the store. He was at the shop on a recent afternoon when a reporter stopped by.

Jaya’s oldest son said his “jaw drops” sometimes when he thinks about all of the things his mother has been through, and the fact that she has been able to run her business all the while. He said a major part of her story was made possible by the goodwill of people in South Carolina.

“As an adult, I look back at all the challenges, everything that she went through, and I don’t think she would be able to do it unless she was in South Carolina,” Hitesh said. “I think these things happened because we were in South Carolina. It’s remarkable, when I look back on her time here, is it that she’s just very lucky? Is it the culture of the community doing business in a state like South Carolina?

“I sometimes think, if we were in many other places, my Mom might not have made it through.”

One customer who has stopped by Looking Good on occasion is former Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, who led the capital city from 2010 to 2021, before going on to work at the White House during President Joe Biden’s tenure. Jaya Tolani even recalls a time when Benjamin came by Looking Good during his mayoral term and helped the shop get clarification in regard to some natural gas line work going on near the store at the time.

“People who bring their unique talents and treasures to your city, and create something that is bespoke for the people that they serve, are special,” Benjamin told The State when asked about Looking Good. “You often hear people articulate that small business is the lifeblood of our community, and that is the reality.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight the fact that [Looking Good] is a business started by immigrants,” the former mayor added. “Strivers from another land who saw the power of the American dream and decided to invest in it.”

Through the years, Jaya Tolani has become fast friends with many other owners and workers from businesses near Looking Good’s Two Notch Road location. That includes Shon Miller, a licensed cosmetologist who works next door at the Renaissance Salon Studio Suites. She said she got to know Tolani about 20 years ago and joked that the relationship was “rough on the edges” at first, but that soon changed.

“When I got to know her and her heart, it changed everything,” Miller said. “It changed everything how I felt about her. She’s invited me to family events. You know, she just became my family. I’m going to cry [when Tolani retires]. I am going to miss her tremendously.”

As the store begins its move toward closing, and as she prepares for retirement, Tolani is thinking of the future. She is looking forward to resting, and to cooking more often, a favorite hobby. There are plans to travel, and to rekindle her interest in playing chess.

But even though she is ready to let go of Looking Good, she admits it won’t be easy.

“I will miss it a lot,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I’ll miss my customers.”

Uniquely Columbia

‘People, Not Patients’ puts hospital survivors at center of Bull Street story

Get one year of unlimited digital access for $159.99

#ReadLocal